Emperor MacArthur: The Rarely Told Story of Japan’s Occupation
And the effects on and of the man who ruled the occupied territory from Tokyo
After a decade of nearly constant conflict, including three and half brutal years of fighting the Americans and two atomic bomb detonations later, the Japanese were finally ready to surrender. Imperial Japan surrendered to Allied forces on August 15th, 1945. Two weeks later, the first and only occupation of the Japanese islands began in earnest by armed forces primarily stocked by United States veterans. On August 30th, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Tokyo to claim rulership over his new kingdom.
This is the story of the occupation of Japan. A little known period of history sandwiched between the cataclysmic end to World War II and the outbreak of the Korean War and eventually the Cold War as a whole. Eventually, Japan reemerges onto the pages of history as an miraculous story of economic recovery in the 1980s but up until that point their history and story is rarely told.
Dividing the spoils
